This blog is a collection of what goes through the mind of a father, a husband, a son, a friend, a lawyer (not your lawyer), and a storyteller, all competing for attention in my head.
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Wednesday, August 02, 2006

Essay Question

Is it wrong to try to foist a government on a people who don't want it? (Note, I am NOT suggesting that this is the case in anything currently going on, I'm posting as a hypothetical.) The president has commented on the importance of spreading democracy in the middle east. My question is, is it more important to spread democracy, or to allow the people to be ruled according to how they wish?

5 comments:

Simple answer to your question is yes and the Dictator for life in the hospital in Cuba is an excellent example. If your asking if what the President is doing in Iraq and trying to form a democratic process then the answer is no. The people of any nation have to want it and the people in Iraq want it for the most part but they don't want it with our troops on the ground in their country. And as long as our troops are on the ground in Iraq it is going to appear to most of the people that the government they have is nothing but a US puppet.

I think to answer the question first one must ask if the people actually want their current form of government. A good example has already been given in using Cuba.

I think it might be presumptuous to jump to the assumption that forms of government are always forced -- it assumes to know the state of mind of the masses. What is forced to one person is necessary aid to another.

Could the people of Iraq exacted change in any other way but by outside intervention? Maybe, but more probably not.

Does spreading democracy entail forcing various ethnic factions who are incompatible with one another to live together inside artificially created borders? If that is the case, no form of government will be workable.